In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers found that women with Her2 negative, stage 2/3 breast cancer, had improved outcomes from chemotherapy when they went on a four-day, low-calorie, plant-based “fasting-mimicking” diet around the time of their therapy.

The researchers explained these results this way:

“When you look at how the body’s metabolism changes by intermittent fasting, it’s pretty fascinating because you decrease a lot of the inflammatory markers, you decrease a lot of growth factors like insulin. And so the thought is that it could be a good anti-cancer therapy by itself.”

According to de Groot and colleagues, healthy cells will switch from a proliferative state to a maintenance and repair state with fasting, while malignant cells don’t adapt to a nutrient scarce environment. “Instead, fasting deprives proliferating cancer cells of nutrients, growth and other factors, which renders them more sensitive to cancer therapy and increases cell death,” they explained.”

Read more about the study here.